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Unexpected
'' |image= |series= |production=40358-105 |producer(s)= |story= |script=Rick Berman and Brannon Braga |director=Mike Vejar |imdbref=tt0572263 |guests=Julianne Christie as Ah'Len, Randy Oglesby as Trena'L, Christopher Darga as Captain Vorok, Regi Davis as Klingon First Officer, T.L. Kolman as Alien Man, John Cragen as Crewman, Drew Howerton as Steward and Mike Baldridge as Dillard |previous_production=Strange New World |next_production=Terra Nova |episode=ENT S01E05 |airdate=17 October 2001 |previous_release=Strange New World |next_release=Terra Nova |story_date(s)= |previous_story=Strange New World |next_story=Terra Nova }} =Summary= In Engineering, Commander Tucker is trying to solve ship-wide problems with power supply and life support. Sub-Commander T'Pol discovers a distortion in the wake of Enterprise. Captain Archer ignites the plasma, revealing a cloaked ship. He hails the vessel and a Xyrillian, Captain Trena'l explains that they have been tapping Enterprise's exhaust to recharge their engines. Archer offers assistance. Tucker is to visit for three days, and he is given injections by Doctor Phlox so his body can adapt to the alien environment. Once aboard, Tucker meets Ah'len, the Xyrillian engineer. They become ever more friendly while repairing the ship. Ah'len takes him to a holodeck to show him Thera, the Xyrillian homeworld. During the tour, Ah'len engages in a seemingly innocent game that allows them to share their thoughts and desires. When the repairs are completed and Tucker returns, he notices a strange growth on his wrist. He visits Phlox, who tells him that he is pregnant (though Phlox also states no genetic material is taken from the male involved). Tucker mentions the telepathic game and Phlox says that it might be the transfer medium for the alien fetus. Later, as the embryo grows, Archer asks T'Pol to locate the Xyrillian ship. They discover it hiding in a Klingon warship's plasma wake. Archer hails Captain Vorok, and helps them to detect the Xyrillian ship. Vorok is angry, and wants to destroy the ship, but T'Pol reminds him that Archer was the one who found Klaang and saved Qo'noS from civil war, and that the Chancellor himself called him "brother" in the Klingon High Council. Tucker goes to the Xyrillian ship, and Ah'len notes the embryo is young enough to be safely transplanted. She apologises to him, informing him she was not aware pregnancy was even possible with another species. Vorok ends the encounter after securing the Xyrillian's holodeck technology, but warns Archer against a future meeting. T'Pol later reminds Tucker that his was "the first recorded instance of a human male pregnancy". =Errors and Explanations= Nitpicking # If their atmosphere needs a long and painful adaptation, why doesn't he simply take a spacesuit along? There may not be enough room for him to wear a spacesuit while working on the engine. In any case, the air supply might not last long enough. # We see a fully functional holodeck on the Xyrillian ship. Only the creation of interactive characters is not possible, but I see this as a rather small step until the functions will be the same as we know from TNG. This holotechnology may be okay if it remains a secret of the Xyrillians, a race we won't see again (which in this case may be explained by the fact that their ships are cloaked). There is, however, absolutely no way that the Klingons should get their hands on holotechnology as early as in the 22nd century, while the Federation will need no less than 213 years until the first lifelike holodeck will be installed aboard the Enterprise-D. Remember how excited Riker was about it in Encounter at Farpoint? Or Picard in The Big Goodbye? Or Lwaxana in Manhunt? It is even more implausible considering that we have never seen a holodeck on a Klingon ship even in the 24th century. We may make up excuses in that it was just a personal enjoyment of the Klingon captain that was never commonly accepted by the Klingons, or that his ship was destroyed and the holotechnology with it. But why should we try to excuse the carelessness of the producers who couldn't wait longer than four episodes to show us the most typical of all 24th century devices, woefully inappropriate within their self-imposed series premise? What bothered me too is that the Xyrillians had no problem adapting the device to the Klingon power grid, something that was always made out to be a big problem in, say, Voyager. So the impression is that their holodeck technology is even more advanced than the Federation's of the 24th century. Either the Klingon captain accidentally destroyed it, or the Klingon High Council ordered it's confiscation for study. # The other nuisance is the K't'inga-class battlecruiser, a design whose lifetime is now at least 225 years! The argument that Klingons are warriors and not engineers is a cheap excuse in my view. Warriors frequently need new weapons. Even the good old bat'leth may have been improved several times using new alloys, and the same should apply to ship hulls. The Klingons are not Hirogen, they want to win a battle and do not care much for the thrill of fighting a superior enemy with traditional hunting rituals. They are eager to get the new holotechnology, as they will also quickly adopt cloaking devices over 100 years later, but their ships always stay the same? There's also the fact that Klingons are waging war all the time. They frequently need to replace ships, far more often than an organization dedicated to peaceful exploration. No one can tell me the Klingons wouldn't come up with new designs, if they need new ships anyway. Also, in TOS the Klingons were clearly on the same technological level as the Federation, which makes a lot of sense since it was supposed to reflect the Cold War in the real world. At that time, the Soviets and the Americans kept the balance of power by developing new horrible weapons and countermeasures almost in parallel. It doesn't seem that the Klingons were very busy developing anything new from 2151 to the end of the Cold War, if they are still using their old rust buckets from the distant past. Finally, in DS9: "Once More Unto the Breach" Kor mentions the old D5 cruiser. Since the TOS cruiser and the K't'inga are different ships but share the designation D7 (VOY: Prophecy), what in the world could a D5 be, if not a really different looking (older) ship? The design was built to last, and was probably designed to be able to easily accept new technology. Nit Central # SMT on Wednesday, October 17, 2001 - 7:15 pm: Do Klingons ever create new ship designs? This one will be a good century old when we see it in ST-TMP, and the Bird of Prey design lasted from STIII until DS9. (Of course, the Excelsior design hung around nearly a century, too.) John A. Lang on Thursday, May 12, 2005 - 7:48 pm: Finally! Some continuity! Thande on Friday, May 13, 2005 - 9:08 am: Sadly, no. This was in fact the major nit for many people - it was bad enough that the D7 lasted for over 100 years from TOS to DS9, but now we find it was being used 100 YEARS BEFORE TOS?!!! Honest Kang- Battlecruiser Salesman on Friday, May 13, 2005 - 10:10 am: Klingon D-7 Battlecruisers: They're built to last! David (Guardian) on Saturday, June 23, 2007 - 9:43 pm: I read that the reuse of the D-7/K'Tinga Klingon battlecruiser in this episode was due to the massive workload from Broken Bow, which didn't give the CGI guys enough time to finish their new, retro Klingon ship (presumably the Raptor from Sleeping Dogs). Really though, I don't have much of a problem with it. One could speculate that it was a brand-new prototype, maybe a D-6 or something, and was so popular they just kept using the same layout. # Yasu on Wednesday, October 17, 2001 - 7:15 pm: You'd think that if Enterprise could find a little cloaked ship from a distance it might notice that a massive Klingon warship was right next to it without getting to visual range. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, October 18, 2001 - 2:51 am: I thought that was because they were searching for the Xyrillians’ energy signature. # Trike on Thursday, October 18, 2001 - 12:14 am: Tucker's been in Starfleet 12 years. Isn't that an awful fast progression to the rank of commander? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, October 18, 2001 - 2:51 am: Could you tell me where they said this, Trike? :) Trike on Thursday, October 18, 2001 - 11:24 am: Luigi, it's the scene when Tucker comes out of the tube scanning device and is confronted by Archer, T'Pol and Phlox about how he got pregnant. Tucker says he has been in Starfleet for 12 years. Merat on Friday, October 19, 2001 - 7:25 am: Starfleet is VERY new, maybe only 12 years old. Perhaps Trip was in a more traditional military organization, and transferred when Starfleet was created? Seniram 16:26, September 5, 2018 (UTC) Maybe he simply got fast tracked. # At the end of the episode, the Xyrillians were close enough to their homeworld to make it there under impulse. This implies the encounter between the Klingons and Enterprise took place in or near the Xyrillian star system. So why didn't anyone go there for a visit? tjoe on Thursday, October 18, 2001 - 12:20 am: Perhaps they didn't visit because the Enterprise is out of stock on Xyrillian contraceptives. Yasu on Thursday, October 18, 2001 - 7:51 am: I won't do the calculation but I am assuming that any distance you can travel in a month on impulse would be a matter of a couple hours at most for a ship at warp. Why couldn't Archer give them a tow for a little while and visit as Trike suggests above? The disruptions to the Enterprise's systems didn't seem so severe. Alternatively, Trip could have done his magic, which apparently no Xyrillian is capable of, and patched up the engines until they could get home. Or the Xyrillians could have a coast guard type service that can come and get them. # Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Thursday, October 18, 2001 - 1:22 am: Did I miss an explanation here? Why didn't the Xyrillians know how to repair their own engine? Why did they need an alien engineer? Maybe they had tried to makes repairs which hadn’t solved the problem, and decided to seek outside help. # Would this Klingon kaptain (oops, captain;-) really have heard of Klaang? Wasn't he just a messenger? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, October 18, 2001 - 2:51 am: The fact that this messenger was partially responsible for averting a civil war is noteworthy news, so it makes sense that word about Klaang spread. # LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, October 18, 2001 - 2:43 am: The alien captain, Trena’L, says they were using the Enterprise’s plasma exhaust to replenish their teraphasic coils and share the Enterprise’s warp field. T’Pol then says that the sensors affirm that the aliens’ warp core is offline. "Share a warp field"? You mean you can travel at warp just by being inside someone else’s warp field? If this is so, why do people in the future bother with tractor beams when towing ships at warp, as implied in The Battle (TNG) and The Wounded (TNG)? According to this episode, all a towed ship has to do is position itself inside another ship’s warp field. The tractor beam may have been used in the TNG episodes to ensure the vessel being towed remained in place. Category:Episodes Category:Enterprise